GoGoD is back online

[macelee]

John, make sure your webmaster is competent enough. A site like Go4Go, which is significantly more sophisticated than your site, can happily live with 64 MB memory and share a busy server with many other websites. If you need assistance I am sure many on this forum can help.

[RBerenguel]

Indeed. Also, from what I can gather gogodonline.co.uk is "just" a wordpress site. Wordpress shouldn't be running out of memory out of the blue (if it did some of the biggest sites in the world would be down for maintenance once a week or so), if this is the case either some plugin is broken or your webmaster coded something very wrongly in there. There are not that many more options.

[John Fairbairn]

gogodonline.co.uk is now back up and running much faster, having been tested on a wide variety of browsers (it says here).

I'm sure you'll let us know if there are still problems. Thank you for your patience.

[Bonobo]

gogodonline.co.uk is now back up and running much faster, having been tested on a wide variety of browsers (it says here).

http://gogodonline.co.uk for clickability … yes, fast enough for me certainly, thank you.

Greetings, Tom

[RBerenguel]

gogodonline.co.uk is now back up and running much faster, having been tested on a wide variety of browsers (it says here).

I'm sure you'll let us know if there are still problems. Thank you for your patience.

John, could you tell your designer to (maybe, if possible) rethink the design behind the "Click here to download Now only 15" big button? It looks terribly similar to one of the default AdSense styles, so my mental "ad avoider" mode skips over it every time I check the page. I'm relatively sure to not be the only one to have this reflex.

[Rowen]

Okay, question time - and I hope I don't seem to silly asking this. If I own Smartgo Kifu is this even worth getting? What are the file formats once downloaded - just loads of sgf files? Also, once purchased if content is added are you allowed to download again? or update some how.

Just curious, its something that has peaked my interest and I want to make sure what I'm getting before I buy.

[John Fairbairn]

Okay, question time - and I hope I don't seem to silly asking this. If I own Smartgo Kifu is this even worth getting? What are the file formats once downloaded - just loads of sgf files? Also, once purchased if content is added are you allowed to download again? or update some how.

I never use Smartgo Kifu, even though I have it, so I can't comment on that. But the GoGoD download is essentially just sgf files (the New In Go html archive and the Names html dictionary were added to the latest edition, but see that as just dollops of icing). You can use those sgf files in free programs such as Kombilo or Drago to do pattern searches, or if you write your own software.

To get updates you need to buy a new edition (currently available twice a year). There is a FAQ on the site with more details.

However, I may drop the site soon. The split between sales via SmartGo and the site is over 99:1 in favour of SmartGo, which may answer your question anyway. The android/windows versions of SmartGo (on the way or here already? - I don't keep track) will make that refocusing even more likely.

[virre]

Indeed. Also, from what I can gather gogodonline.co.uk is "just" a wordpress site. Wordpress shouldn't be running out of memory out of the blue (if it did some of the biggest sites in the world would be down for maintenance once a week or so), if this is the case either some plugin is broken or your webmaster coded something very wrongly in there. There are not that many more options.

(This feels like half threadnecromancy)

Acctually as my work do host some wordpress sites with heavy traffic flow we need to cache data and have split servers due to the amount of load. I guess that all the big names do so (although personally I mostly work with Drupal at the moment and that really really really needs a few app servers and good caching. I so miss Perl but writeing that seems to not pay the bills)

[Bonobo]

[..]
However, I may drop the site soon. The split between sales via SmartGo and the site is over 99:1 in favour of SmartGo, which may answer your question anyway. The android/windows versions of SmartGo (on the way or here already? - I don't keep track) will make that refocusing even more likely.

I can understand the reasoning behind this, but I know I will miss the nutritional value of your “New In Go” column. For me, this wonderful Go feuilleton (together with wanting to support your work) was reason enough to purchase the GoGoD Summer 2014 edition even though I already have (and use, and love) SmartGo Kifu.

Regards, Tom

[ez4u]

...

However, I may drop the site soon. The split between sales via SmartGo and the site is over 99:1 in favour of SmartGo, which may answer your question anyway. The android/windows versions of SmartGo (on the way or here already? - I don't keep track) will make that refocusing even more likely.

I may be the only one, but it will break my heart when this happens. So far at least, direct access to the sgf files (OK, via kombilo) is much more powerful and flexible than SmartGo kifu. The end of an era IMHO.

[Uberdude]

John modestly described New In Go as icing, but icing is delicious.

[John Fairbairn]

I may be the only one, but it will break my heart when this happens. So far at least, direct access to the sgf files (OK, via kombilo) is much more powerful and flexible than SmartGo kifu. The end of an era IMHO.

It's a complex issue, and I haven't made my mind up - and don't plan to until the first anniversary of T Mark's death, which will be marked by the Winter 2014 edition.

But for those seeking to understand, some of the factors that go into the mix, in no special order, are:

1. Poor sales on site. This may have been overtaken but when I last queried how many sales the Summer 2014 edition had so far, it was 1. For comparison, a couple of years ago we would expect about a dozen at this juncture, but we could always get a boost of another 20 or so when Mark went to the European or US Congress. I don't go to congresses.

2. I had lunch with macelee not long ago. We confirmed to each other that piracy was a problem. You may not choose to agree, but as he pointed out in a recent post, Sensei's Library continues to encourage people to download "free" databases that contain much work done by GoGoD. Encapsulating the GoGoD database inside SmartGo, whilst it is not fool-proof, does offer some protection.

3. I haven't got time to do everything myself. One of my daughters looks after the site (and dealings with Anders, which is why I'm always a bit hazy on what the latest situation is), but she is not a go player, and I feel a bit reluctant to burden her with the sort of queries that come with a site. For example, a recent buyer apparently bought the Winter 2013 edition then complained that he wanted games from 2014. These niggles also tend to come back to me for resolution, taking time I can ill afford.

4. Much of the old guard, often people I know personally, are fading from the go scene (including L19). I miss them, and find the new guard, while they do bring new things to the game, don't seem to have much time for the particular sense of go community that I cherish.

[logan]

the particular sense of go community that I cherish.

May I ask what that is?

[Aidoneus]

1. Poor sales on site. This may have been overtaken but when I last queried how many sales the Summer 2014 edition had so far, it was 1. For comparison, a couple of years ago we would expect about a dozen at this juncture, but we could always get a boost of another 20 or so when Mark went to the European or US Congress. I don't go to congresses.

Hi John,

Have you considered that you are now asking people to essentially just purchase the games. (If I understand this right.) I bought the Winter2013 download version. (I didn't realize that it had only the games, but as the price was so low, I can't complain about this bargain!) I can see buying database updates, or purchasing some sort of update subscription, but I can't justify buying the whole database every time a new edition comes out--especially if you plan on semi-annual revisions. Do you think that reservations such as mine could have been a factor in poor sales of GoGoD?

In any case, I hope that you do not become so discouraged that you abandon distribution of simple sgf files. (I bought SmartGo for Windows but refuse to buy a Kindle, and I hate locking into proprietary software. Perhaps because I was locked into the Mac world from 1985 till about 2000, when I finally started building my own PCs.)

[RBerenguel]

Indeed. Also, from what I can gather gogodonline.co.uk is "just" a wordpress site. Wordpress shouldn't be running out of memory out of the blue (if it did some of the biggest sites in the world would be down for maintenance once a week or so), if this is the case either some plugin is broken or your webmaster coded something very wrongly in there. There are not that many more options.

(This feels like half threadnecromancy)

Acctually as my work do host some wordpress sites with heavy traffic flow we need to cache data and have split servers due to the amount of load. I guess that all the big names do so (although personally I mostly work with Drupal at the moment and that really really really needs a few app servers and good caching. I so miss Perl but writeing that seems to not pay the bills)

Hi virre, at work I also deal with wordpress sites. We do have load balancers and caching for the largest, but the smalles ones don't care. Even the intermediate could handle perfectly fine without it (as we've been required to do when doing some maintenance work.) I don't expect gogod to reach up of 2k/visits day, and a normal, plain WP install should handles this without many issues even in the most modest EC2-on-demand instance.